It’s a week full of interesting twists as our players travel into the future to tell their anime tale!

This week’s challenge: Write about your episode as if you’re telling your grandchildren about it 50 years from now!

Meganebu! (Episode Seven)Player: KanashimiClass: Boss

When I was a kid, shows had meaning… when I became an adult, shows became all about moe and stereotypes. This is a story of a show that, while enjoyable, was nothing more than just fanservice and bright colors. Maybe there’s a bit of cynicism in the idea that media turns into things you’ve seen before once you get old enough, but it’s kind of true. It really comes down to the type of person and if they can really get any happiness from seeing things only slightly different.

Either way, this show I’m talking about, is called Meganebu! and it’s silly. Think of a gang war–I know you kids have those–but the only difference is both gangs have glasses. There’s no punching either. In fact, one of them is the Glasses Club and the other is the student council. Apparently they hate each other, and decide to analyze their previously failed mission. The student council members are also really crappy to each other. The president has a stomach ache from the sheer pain of failing their mission, and the other guy just decides to give him an empty medicine bottle. Now, that’s true friendship. If you can’t kick your best friend in the shin when he’s down, you’re not actually friends. Kids now-a-days just think you say nice things to each other, but that’s total BS.

The Glasses Club is working on their x-ray glasses. See, we didn’t have those things and we only got them for a while in 2014 when Google Glasses came out. Anyway, the glasses fail and to make matters worse they get a notice from the student council saying, “All clubs not containing at least five members will be dissolved.” Wait, there was five of them… how did that work? Akira, Hayato, Yukiya, Takuma, Mitsuki… That’s five. I swear to god, I don’t have dementia.

Hayato points this fact out, but Akira retorts that he’s only a provisional member so it doesn’t count. He doesn’t actually wear glasses, just the rims; he was trying to be cool. Kids did stupid things; you’ll look back at life and realize most of what you did in the last week was idiotic. Just sayin’. They ignore the obvious solution of just making Hayato a real member and decide to just find someone new by tomorrow. Anime characters don’t think, they just do.

So apparently this one person on student council is named Suzuki. Akira was too lazy to think of nicknames for the three Suzuki’s in his class so he just called this one “third”. So he’s the third in everything he does, a curse he says. He could just like… get a life, but you know, high school is your life right now, so whatever.

The student council president on the other hand is adorable. I mean, when we were young we liked fictional characters, not robots. Just sayin’. Anyway, the president wants to uphold the school’s pride, since every time the Glasses Club does anything outside they act like fools. The president passes Akira as he says that out loud, and then realizes his mistake cutely.

The club tries to pass around flyers and actively get someone to join. This causes a Suzuki flashback where he tried to join at one point, but since Akira kept calling him third he tore up his application in disgust. See, we had clubs in school as kids. You guys, you just kinda sit at home and flop on the sofa. I remember Yahoo! Groups, a memory you’ll never have!

Apparently the latest version of the x-ray glasses causes Akira to say whatever the heck he thinks. See, when I was a kid, we had restraint. He starts telling the other members that their insufficient love for glasses caused no one to join. Akira leaves to the student council room to be weird there. He had to walk, he couldn’t do any fancy teleporting like you kids.

Yukiya wakes up and declares that pair was a failed product. The members of the Glasses Club chase after Akira in an effort to get to him before he angers the club president. They burst in right as Akira is being yelled at by Suzuki. Suzuki pulls on him and the motion rips the glasses off and this put them on the foreign student council member, Tony.

Akira begins to talk to the president regardless, saying he could rest easy if a glasses-wearer was on top. The problem is that he is a “Sometimes Wears Glasses” person (someone who only puts their glasses on to read or look professional). He declares that the president can’t decide between one or the other and is, in fact, a half-baked person. This causes him to have a stomach pain, and, before he can catch the medicine, Akira grabs it and holds it hostage. The president makes a special rule to allow the club as long as Akira gives the medicine back.

As the Glasses Club let the failed x-ray glasses self-destruct, blowing up the student council room. And that’s the story of how I met your father. I forgot the trip around the world and the time where we won the lottery and lost all the winnings, but I’ll tell it after my nap.

Alright kids, sit on down. I’m going to tell you about this anime I watched way back in the dark, dark ages of 2013. Ya know! 2013 was a pretty good year for anime up until the fall. It brought us Attack on Titan and Free!, but then the fall came and it brought us Diabolik Lovers. Pull up a chair, this is going to be a long story, my children. This anime I watched furthered in objectifying women in every way possible. However, the episode I’m going to tell you about is episode seven. Might have been the best episode of the series I’ve seen so far.

It was a dark and stormy night. I’ve always wanted to start a story like that and in this episode it was true! Yui was sleeping when something woke her up. She went to the window and saw a woman. Is she another vampire? A ghost? A vampiric ghost? Well, the show didn’t say, so come up with your own theory. Next something happens to Yui, knocking her somewhat out of it like a woman possessed, and she walked off. The next part of the episode, kids, is what we like to call “character development.” Why it took us seven episodes to get to this point I, to this day, have no idea.

We find ourselves in the magical land of flashbacks. In which Yui sees all the boys as children and how they were treated, which is rather poorly. If I ever caught you kids trying to raise kids like this, I’d paddle your behinds! They’re all in competition to become the head of the house… always pressuring kids to be the best leads to the kind of nasty bratty behavior we’ve seen from them in the future!

It becomes painfully obvious that the anger and hatred between the brothers stems from their mothers. Reiji’s hate for Shu stems quite apparently from his younger-son complex. We also see Subaru’s mother locked up in a tower for some unknown reason. I can say his character’s story is honestly the one I’m most interested in at the moment.

The flashback ends when Yui comes across Ayato watching his mother flirt with what I can only assume is a man other then his father. If I ever catch wind of you kids cheating I’m gonna paddle you even worse then if you kids are raising your kids to be a bunch of little brats. You hear me! It’s the worst of the worst! It’s even worse then taking your boyfriends head on a nice boat! What do you mean I’m rambling off topic? This is my story kids!

Right, anyway! We come back to reality and the rest of the episode sort of fits into this series normal status of awkward. Well, it was good to see a real anime for a while rather then the story of the world’s most bland main character getting her blood taken. The rest of the episode is seriously Ayato and Raito ganging up on her; it’s sick. It’s nasty and I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone under the age of sixteen; actually make that eighteen… actually make it twenty-six… actually make that never. Kids, never watch this anime!

Overall: It was nice to feel, at least for ten minutes, like I was watching a real anime with real characters past them being a bunch of tropes. I wish it had lasted longer, but you can’t always get what you wish for. I suppose that’s the lesson of today’s story.

Oh! Hello kids. It’s so nice when you come see Grandpa Elk. Now come over here and take a seat, and let me tell you about episode 7 of Gundam Build Fighters, an anime from when your old gramps was young man. Why I’m telling you about this I have no idea; I should probably be relaying to you important stories from my life as lessons for you or something. But this episode was a beach episode, so that’s way better.

And how much better was it? Oh jeez. At the time I first saw it it was my favorite episode of the series. Until episode 12 when they all transformed into vehicles and ran over junked cars like in a monster truck show… Oh wait, that didn’t happen. Grandpa’s losing it a bit, kids.

Anyways back to this story. It opened up with action from the newfangled Gundam Sei made, the Mark II! Back in my day we would have killed for a Mark II, but you kids have your Mark XXVIIs and your qPhones. It was a simpler time back then.

Anyways, back to the story. So we see this new Gundam and it’s amazing. They win the regional tournament, and as a prize they get a ticket to an onsen on the ocean. Ramba Ral drives them, probably because he wants to see Rinko in a swimsuit, and China comes also, mainly because Rinko wants to set her up with Sei. Speaking of which, you should really spend more time with Cheryl. She’s a nice girl. you kids and your brain implant dating. When I was your age we did things the old fashioned way. With eHarmony and Match.com.

Anyways, back to the story. They get to the hotel, and Mao is there to welcome them. He’s acting as a worker despite being a guest because he wants to impress the owner’s daughter. Which is how you all should be. The hotel is kind of beat down, but as a pro-Gunpla builder, Mao is fixing it up for them. After a short while at the hotel, a truck comes speeding down the road, nearly runs over Reiji, and smashes into the hotel, taking out the door and ending up in the lobby. You’d think it was a youngster drivin’ the way they drive like they’re invincible; but no, it was an adult! And it was no accident. Turns out he’s a land shark, trying to intimidate the owners into selling the property. Reiji tries to get in a physical fight with the land shark, but everyone else stops him.

Ramba Ral shows up, fresh out of the hot springs, and recognizes the head land shark as an ex-pro Gundam fighter Blazing Tatsu! Mao Sei and Reiji challenge him to a Gunpla battle, if they win he has to leave and never come back. If Tatsuzo wins he keeps the property for free. The owner’s daughter believes in Mao so they agree.

Blazing Tastu has a custom Apsaras III. For those of you unaware of what an Apsaras is, it’s a monstrously huge mech.

It’s been customized with an I-field, which stops beam attacks from doing damage. He traps Mao and Sei’s Gundams with Adzam Leaders that stop them from moving. All looks lost, but Mao manages to harness the power of his love to break them free and blast a hole in the Apsaras’ armor with a giant Satellite beam. It takes everything his Gunpla has though, so Reiji has to finish the job by firing twin beam rifles into the hole Mao created. Of course, back then, beam rifles and satellite beams were mainly just an anime thing. This was before we used them to fight off the aliens.

Ramba Ral tells him that Gunpla is ever evolving, and his custom Apsaras might have been world class before, but neglecting Gunpla for years means he’s behind the curve. You kids just keep getting weirder and weirder with your tech this and cyber that. I remember when it was e-mail, and not 3-mail.

Mao promises to win regionals every year so he can come back to the hotel, and then refuses to tell Sei how his Mao could use his Satellite beam without charging it by the moon.

So you see, the moral of the story is if you count your Gundams before they hatch, you make lemonade out of the land shark on the beach. Don’t ever forget this important lesson!

This player did not turn in their episode summary for the week. As such, they will not be awarded 50 flat points or the additional 20 for doing a challenge. Christmas is considered a no-show and as such has lost a dollar of his original bid. He has four more chances before he will be kicked out of the competition.

The year 2013 was a dark time, kids. It was a time before your parents were even a glimmer in my eye. It was also the year that gave us the horror of Log Horizon. It was an anime about being stuck in a video game, much like that Sword Art Online anime I told you about before. Except this one isn’t good.

I remember sitting down just before Thanksgiving–fifty years ago today, I’d reckon–to watch episode seven of this show. This was fifty years ago, mind you, so we actually had to watch the shows instead of having them beamed into our heads. Instead it was carried into our house by wires. Can you imagine?

Anyway, I remember it starting out with some really boring explanations of how video games worked. I remember this because every episode started this way. But I think this one in particular talked about how money worked in the game. Apparently they could survive a day in the game with just 35 gold, which made the Shiroe’s request for five million gold seem insane. I know that 5 million doesn’t seem like a lot–I know that’s about how much a loaf of bread costs–but back in my day five million dollars could buy a nice house.

Anyway, where was I? Oh right. Anime.

I believe this episode was the first one where all of the useless MMO gobbeldygook started to tie into people’s lives. And we actually started getting meaningful character interactions.

That episode seemed to focus a lot on the developing economy in the world. For a while, things seemed to be developing fairly well. All of the main characters were happy, anyway.

Well, except for the president of thw guild, who felt inadequate compared to the people around her. I liked to think they’d go back to it, but my memory of episodes after this one are a little fuzzy… I’ll just assume they never talked about it ever again after this episode. They tended to do that.

They also talked about how they were able to make actual food. When I first heard about the food being awful in the video game world I didn’t think it would be playing such a big part in the show, but I’m pretty sure they’d mentioned it in every episode up to this point. I expected a plot about escaping an MMO, not a show about competing restaurant chains. But I guess it was a different world 50 years ago. A time when people thought that sort of thing was interesting somehow.

They also kept fixating on this ninja girl who looked like she was 12 years old and how adorable she was. It was really kind of creepy, now that I think about it. This episode also reminded us of some subplot about saving children that I’d completely forgotten about until now.

I feel like this was an episode where we really got to the heart of what this anime was trying to be. Shiroe talked in-depth about how he’s started realizing how much he’s changed and how he felt the need to belong in a way he hadn’t before. He then hinted once again that his plan was still a secret. I guess to entice people watching to watch next week? It didn’t really work, I don’t think.

In the end, I don’t know why I’m telling you kids about this anime. Or how I remember it. Talking about it now I remember that it’s really not worth mentioning. Oh well. Go back to playing with your hologram Nintendos and let me take a nap…

Bobby Henshin, Age 80: “Jeffrey, do you know about them Japanese animes I watch?”

Grandson: “Yes, Grandad, I watch them too.”

Bobby Henshin Age 80: “That’s my grandson! Good boy, Jeffrey!”

Grandson: “It’s Brandon…”

Bobby Henshin Age 80: “You know, Jeffrey, this reminds me of this one episode of an anime I saw way back in my youth. Episode 7 of I couldn’t Become A Hero So I Reluctantly Got A Job.”

Grandson: “That title sounds ridiculously long, Grandad.”

Bobby Henshin Age 80: “Quiet, boy, and let me tell my story!”

In this episode we learn that the old lady who ordered the air conditioner from LEON is now living with her son and his wife. But we also learn that the son bought a air conditioner from The Amada Corporation. This is what’s known as a double booking.

Grandson: “Really? We’re going with this schtick?”

Bobby Henshin Age 80: “Hey! Do you want me to go back into my World War 3 stories?”

Grandson: “No, No. Please continue.”

After learning of the double booking, the family decides to get the air conditioner from Amada, because it is much cheaper. But before they could install and cut their loses, they learn the the house’s magic is being drained, and no one can figure out why. Amada is wanting to charge over 300,000 gold to find out why and fix it. LEON would charge more, but decide to do it for free instead. Lore, Raul and Fino begin to search the house to see why. After looking around, Raul comes to realize that this exact thing happened yesterday at the sweet shop. The case is solved when he realizes that it is the work of Magic Eaters. They decide to look under the house, and, upon searching, they find hundreds of magic eaters. Lore then puts her knowledge of magic engineering to work. She draws a magical line that looks like a circuit breaker on the floor and uses it to drown out the magic eaters using Fino and her large store of magical energy as bait. The plan starts to work until Fino gets covered in the Magic Eaters. They all converged together to form one giant magic eater! Fino, scared, pulls Raul into the magic eater, too. Once all the magic eaters were out of the house, Fino unleashed her magic, and all the magic eaters exploded everywhere! Thanks to the people of LEON, the case was solved and the day was saved. The son of the old woman decided to thank LEON for their services by buying their air conditioner instead. Giving LEON a huge win over Amada.

Bobby Henshin Age 80: “Ah the good old days of anime… Jeffrey? Oh, he left. Hunny! Where’s my pudding!?”

Watch I Couldn’t Become A Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided To Get A Job on Crunchyroll or talk about this episode on our forums.

This player did not turn in their episode summary for the week. As such, they will not be awarded 50 flat points or the additional 20 for doing a challenge. Kayarath is considered a no-show and as such has lost a dollar of his original bid. He has four more chances before he will be kicked out of the competition.

Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and others! DJ Knightshade is here again to review to episode 7 of Kill la Kill! Hearing about how many students have been starting their own clubs in order to become eligible to get better uniforms, and thus better living rights, Ryuko decides to start her own Fight Club, and assigns Mako as the club president to handle all the paperwork and meetings. Basically, she’s throwing Mako under the bus and forcing her to take on all the actual hard work. As Ryuko increases the club’s reputation by defeating other club presidents, Mako manages to earn a One-Star Goku Uniform, upgrading the Mankanshoku family to a better apartment.

Mako’s determination to preserve her family’s newfound happiness moves the family up to an even more luxurious lifestyle. However, as Mako becomes more serious about her duties as club president and the other family members indulge in their wealth, Ryuko starts to feel lonely as the family finds less time to spend together. Just as Ryuko decides to resign from the Fight Club, Satsuki gives Mako a Two-Star Goku Uniform, telling her to defeat Ryuko if she wants to keep her life of luxury. Mako’s entire family arrives and also goes against Ryuko, telling Mako to finish her. Ryuko decides to take the brunt of Mako’s attacks, which leads to Mako eventually realizing the error of her ways, deciding to disband the Fight Club, and returning to her life in the slums. Meanwhile, Satuski reveals that by using Ryuko to purge the weaker clubs, she will restructure the student council by holding a reprisal general election.

This episode actually had the making of a really good season finally. Family going against Ryuko, a truly epic fight between Ryuko and of all people Mako, and even the ending credits had the sense of new beginnings. The show was awesome, hilarious, and action packed from beginning to end. There wasn’t a single scene I didn’t like, and students Ryuko had to fight, however little screen time they had, were colorful and funny. The Goku uniforms of a few like the folk dancing club and the origami club were ones I wish they could have shown more of, but understandably got rid of quickly for the sake of plot. Mako’s two star goku uniform was probably one of my favorite ones shown as of this episode. Missile launching bat; need I say more about how awesome it was? In any case, I thought it was awesome, and I can’t wait for the rest of the episodes; however I don’t want it to come out too fast so this fun ride doesn’t end.

This player did not turn in their episode summary for the week. As such, they will not be awarded 50 flat points or the additional 20 for doing a challenge. Zero is considered a no-show and as such has lost a dollar of his original bid. He has two more chances before he will be kicked out of the competition.